Works of Fantasy

Insomnia is the name of the game lately. Not a productive movie flavored insomnia either. Real, brutal, tired as hell, lie in bed awake insomnia. The kind of depressing sleeplessness where you believe that you should be able to accomplish a bunch of tasks. But in reality you can barely follow the plot lines of sesame street.

The good news is that it seems to be cooling down a bit. Instead of not sleeping for three nights in a row, it’s settled down to sleeping OK for a day or two, and then a sleepless night. Which in essence is a big freekin tease! I just start to feel good again. Start to feel productive, and then Bam! nope you’re not sleeping tonight.

Fortunately while I’ve been going through this haze of a mind numbing sleep/awake cycle, not once have I been tempted to quit writing. So that’s good I suppose. Not that it means I’ve been getting much done. A page or two of editing here or there. A few nights I’ve even been coherent enough to finish a chapter.

So really it’s pretty much the story of life in general. Just keep plugging away.

Some day I hope to make this a much longer post about the horrors of necessary pain killer addiction. But tonight it’s just a quick and simple explanation. In list form no less.

1. Injured my back awhile back. (pun intended. I like puns.)

2. The only form of treatment for some time was strong painkillers. The side affects of which are searchable on Google. suffice to say that concentration and motivation both suffer dramatically. The pain just got worse, which in turn increased the need for pain killers.

3. Couldn’t really concentrate enough to read a book, never mind write/edit/blog/such and such and such.

4. Had two spine surgeries.

5. Surgeries seem to be working.

6. Getting off the shitty pain killers.

7. Feeling much better. Motivation, concentration, and mood are all much better. Beginning to put my life back together again. I am reading, editing, world building, and story planning again.

Someday I will probably fill in the blanks. Thanks to all family and friends who have been there for me throughout this debauchery of a life during the last 2 years.

One of the ways I’ve found to motivate myself to edit. Find a nice view, a little coffee, and the laptop. Isolated from many of the world’s distractions. Cause let’s face it, editing us a pain in the Ass, and its easy to get distracted.

These are the days that make me wonder what the hell I was thinking while writing a chapter. Two thirds of this chapter was crossed out, and rewritten. But hey, that’s what we do right? Still slugging away, day by day. W.

It’s that time of year again. The time when we all rush out and climb over eachother for that toy that we have to have.

This is a time for happiness. And oddly enough sometimes for lonliness. For Giving and receiving. The beauty of family and the hope of togetherness.
For me it is a time to be with the two most important people in my life. My boys. There is nothing on this earth that makes me more happy than seeing their happiness.

There are times when I think I haven’t been the best father. But this is defeatist thinking. I do my best, just the same as every parent does. We want our children to be happy, and strive to be better than us.

The other day I bought a little plastic Christmas tree. The thing was only three feet tall, and reminded me of the Charlie brown Christmas tree, before decoration.

I had the boys help me with the lights. I stood back and watched the bare tree twinkle. It was missing something. Ornaments of course! Now it would have been easy to walk down to the drug store and pick up some cheap baubles. But being me I sat down and thought. The whole time wrestling with the little ones.

It occured to me some time later that there might be a better way to make this Christmas decorating a little more fun, and memorable.

On Saturdays we often go to the farmers market together. I load up the doublewide stroller and lean back as I glide down the giant hill. This time however I made a stop at the art store. We loaded up on construction paper, glue, glitter and other implements of destructive constructionism.

When we got home we sat down and crafted our own ornaments. I asked the boys what shapes they wanted, then we cut them out. We decorated them with glue and glitter. Then attached string and violla! Ornaments.

They were jagged and runny, lopsided and bent, with all sorts of different glue glitter designs only a four year old could create. But to me they were by far the most valuable ornaments I had ever had. The expieriance itself was well worth the time and effort.

The result, much like Charlie Brown’s post decoration tree, was by far the best looking Christmas tree I had ever seen. And probably always will be.